I really don't think fuel consumption is an issue on the dragsters. The engine life expectancy is roughly 12 seconds at full throttle, they get entirely rebuilt at least every second run, typically develop 1600-2400 horsepower and cost over 50 grand. The supercars demonstrated on the show Top-Gear typically only run 3-5 miles per gallon during their track tests, though on the road many of them exceed 20 MPG. I'm not surprised the Tesla wasn't shown considering it was the Geneva show; not normally a show featuring American iron. Nice slide-show! The 454 in my boat sucks up 28 gallons per hour developing only 300HP, but in my truck towing it gets 18 MPG (sometimes!). I could probably turbo-charge either (or both) and decrease my fuel mileage significantly - but oh what a wonderful noise they would make!

Wow, Caman-LT, I'm impressed. I thought of you when I read this morning's news about Chrysler, which had to suspend production of the Viper for two months because of slow sales. You were a day ahead of the news on this! See link below.

Charles, I also got an explanation about why they run the engines so very rich, aside from the fact that it makes more power. It seems that if the engine ever goes lean at that speed and power level that detonation will occur and that usually destroys the engine by blasting it apart. At least that was the explanation that I got, which does make sense when I stop and think.

The next highest road vehicle fuel consumption is for a USMC vevicle with a twelve cylinder engine that burns over a gallon a minute at high output.Which vehicle nobody would say, it may be classified information.

I've heard the same thing about quarter-mile fuel consumption, William K. To get a sense of what that means, fill a gallon milk jug with water, pour it out, and time it. It takes about 12-13 seconds. That's a lot more time than it takes some of these cars to do a quarter-mile and use more than a gallon of fuel.

Cadman-LT, you're actually not far off. Chrysler considered shelving the Viper in 2012 but decided to keep it. They showed it at this year's Detroit auto show, where they said the "Stryker Green color would be available starting in February, 2014 on the Viper GTS price class." So I guess the reports of its death were premature.

Cadman, the Hennessey is certainly a fast car, but the fuel consumption is probably quite serious. I have read that some of the faster dragsters go through well over a gallon for that quaerter mile blast, and while the car is not described as a dragster it would probably give a good showing at a lot of strips.

It would have been interesting to see just what sort of milage is claimed for these cars, but I don't suppose that would matter to anyone who could afford to own one.

An interesting thought: just mention insuring one to an all-state insurance agent! Their expression would be entertaining, I would think.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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